


Barely Breathing

by vegashoods



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Derek & Stiles are broken up, M/M, Murder Trial, kind of, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 05:49:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11662884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegashoods/pseuds/vegashoods
Summary: In which Derek is on trial for the murder of Scott McCall.





	Barely Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> so this is an au where they're all just normal humans with normal problems. stiles and scott are 20 and derek is 27. derek and stiles had been dating for a few years before this - that should be all you need to know.

               Derek Hale.

               His mother had always told him it was a strong name, but he didn’t feel very strong now. He didn’t feel strong in the tiny witness stand he was confined to, under the heavy gazes of the jury. There was no strength in the way he held himself, as if he were about to curl into himself until he no longer existed. There was no strength in the way he was chewing his fingernails so hard they were reduced to bleeding stubs, or how he had gone for far too long without shaving and now his usual five o’clock shadow had turned into the beginnings of an unruly beard. He couldn’t look anyone in the eye, _wouldn’t_ , because he knew how he looked.

                Pathetic.

                Weak.

                And he hated it. He hated it so much, because he was never afraid, never on the outside, and now here he was, shaking at a trial that would be over in twenty minutes. It wasn’t like he didn’t already know what the verdict would be—there had been too many witnesses, too much proof, and Derek’s word was not enough to cancel all of that out. Whatever he said in the courtroom would be worth nothing.

                His attorney started simple—“State your name for the court.” Derek said it without looking up. He focused on the bright orange he was wearing, the handcuffs restraining him, and tried to keep his panic at bay.

                Killer.

                That’s why they were there, wasn’t it? It was a murder trial.

                “Derek, where were you on the night of June fifth, two thousand sixteen?”

                Derek raised his head, and he saw him, and he almost threw up.

                Stiles was sitting silently in his seat. His knee was bouncing, fast and jerky under the table—ADHD that had never gotten any better once Stiles was an adult. His expression was stoic and unreadable, though he had just given a statement, and Derek wanted so much to say something to him, or even just to make eye contact.

                But he couldn’t. Because Stiles had given a statement, but it had been against Derek, not for him. And Derek hadn’t looked at him the entire time he’d been on the witness stand, but he had still heard him. He had heard every word, every syllable recounting what Stiles had seen that night, exactly as he remembered it, so help him God. It was the truth as he knew it, and nothing Derek said could make him believe otherwise. Looking at him now would only be a sign of weakness.

                And now he had to be strong.

                “I was at a friend’s house,” he said.

                He could feel the stares of the jury weighing on him, disgusted and horrified and morbidly curious about what he would say next. Though they were required to listen to him, Derek knew full well that they had already made up their minds. Anything he said would only be turned against him once the jury began to discuss the verdict. He knew this, and his lawyer knew it, too, and had told Derek that all they could do was make him look like a good man and hope that his sentence would be light.

                “Can you identify that friend for the court?”

                Derek’s breath stuttered in his chest and hitched in his throat, an automatic process turning into a task that required his full concentration. The thought of that night, of Scott lying there, covered in his own blood . . . it was too much to bear. Even imagining killing an innocent boy made his stomach flip sickeningly over itself, and the fact that everyone in that courtroom thought he had murdered Scott was worse than any prison sentence could ever be.

                “Scott McCall,” he managed, and his voice sounded faint and weak to his own ears.

                There it was again. Weak. He couldn’t bring himself to be anything else. He didn’t know _how_ to be anything else, when he was on his own. With his mother, he’d been strong. With his sisters, he’d been strong. With Erica and Boyd and Isaac and Scott, he’d been strong.

                With Stiles, he’d been

                Well. With Stiles, he’d been something completely different and yet so much better.

                And now, with Stiles looking at him the way he was—brown eyes sorrowful and burning, but not with the passion he had reserved only for Derek. This burning was different. Angry. It was anger and devastation and disbelief blended into one terrible expression that Derek couldn’t stand to look at. He couldn’t stand looking at it, knowing that he was the reason behind it.

                “Why were you at Scott’s house?” the lawyer asked. He didn’t need the microphone attached to his podium to be heard. He was a big, broad man with a low booming voice to match his massive size and a balding gray head. He looked like someone who belonged at the front door of a club, beating back relentless under-aged would-be customers or out-of-hand partiers.  When asked to picture a lawyer, this man was the last thing Derek would think of, but he was said to be the best that Derek’s bountiful savings account could afford.

                Derek blinked down at the witness stand in front of him, where evidence had already been collected and left for later use. There were pictures of the crime scene, of the broken down front door and the gun and the blood, so much blood, spattered on the walls and staining the carpet with rust-colored spots.

                And Scott.

                “He called me,” Derek said, tearing his gaze away from the photos before he could focus on the most gruesome parts.

                “What time was it when he called you?”

                “I . . . I guess around three AM.” The whole timeline was blurry, unfocused, a distant memory. The events that had happened seemed out of order and mixed together into one horrifying image in Derek’s mind.

                An image of a man who looked more like a boy, twenty years old, dead on the floor with a bullet hole in his head.

                “What did he say to you? Start at the beginning.”

                This was the hard part. Remembering that conversation, even fragments of it, was almost too painful for Derek to bear. It was the conversation that had led up to this moment, in this courtroom, pinned under the cruel gazes of so many strangers.

                Derek took a deep breath and steeled himself. He could do this. He was strong. “He, uh . . . he said that he was sorry he missed a Christmas party.”

                “Who threw the party?”

                Derek swallowed. “Me and my then-boyfriend.” The words sounded so strange: _then-boyfriend_. Stiles was supposed to be his forever-boyfriend, not some ex that he brought up in casual conversation and had nothing but vague memories of. Derek had wanted to propose to him that night and hadn’t gone through with it. Why hadn’t he?

                “Mr. Stilinski?”

                Derek forced a nod, eyes and cheeks burning. He couldn’t bring himself to look out at the crowd, but he couldn’t look down, either; the pictures sat taunting him, carefully laminated, screaming _your fault, your fault_ , up at him. He flipped them facedown with as much force as he could manage in handcuffs and fixed his eyes on an individual grain of wood in the stand. “Yes.” _You have to say all your answers out loud._

                “What else did Scott say?”

                Stiles’ knee was jerking harder now, up-down-up-down so fast that it was smacking against the bottom of the table he sat behind in a steady rhythm. Derek raised his voice enough to drown it out. “He sounded upset, so I asked him what was wrong, and he . . . He lost it. He started screaming, about fate and destiny and how nothing mattered and how he couldn’t make the voices in his head stop. He told me that . . .” Derek paused to catch his breath and regain his composure. He was coming dangerously close to crying, and he doubted the jury would have much sympathy for him if he was blubbering through his testimony. “He said that he wanted it all to end. I was terrified. I—I stayed on the phone with him and went to his apartment, but he figured out I was coming and hung up on me before I got there.”

                This might have been enough to save him. The fact that Scott had called him, sobbing and threatening suicide, might have been enough to prove that Derek hadn’t murdered him. But there was no proof left that the conversation had ever taken place; Scott had crushed his phone when he’d realized Derek was coming, and Derek had thrown his against the wall after he’d been unable to save him.

                He wondered if any part of Stiles, deep down, wanted to believe his story. Wanted to believe that the Derek he’d used to know, the Derek he’d fallen in love with, would never kill his best friend.

                It didn’t matter. The bigger part of Stiles believed what he’d seen with his own eyes—the gun on the floor, next to Scott’s dead body, and Derek in the apartment with blood on his hands. His fingerprints were on the gun. There was too much against him, and far too little he could use as defense.

                The lawyer took a deep breath and let it out, not seeming to notice the microphone picking it up and amplifying it throughout the room. “I know this is difficult,” he said, and his voice was sympathetic but professional. He was being paid to be on Derek’s side. “But I need you to tell me what happened once you arrived at Scott’s apartment.”

                Derek decided that the best way to handle this would be to get through it as quickly as he could. He couldn’t let himself feel it, couldn’t let himself relive that night. It was a narration, a sequence of events, nothing more. He was simply reading from the book of his life, and he had to get through this depressing scene before he could find out what happened next. He closed his eyes and sighed. “The door was locked,” he said. “I had to break it down to get inside. I—I could hear him in there, yelling and crying, and I was scared he was going to . . . do something bad. So I ran inside, and found him in his bedroom. He was standing there, in the middle of the room, and his phone was smashed on the floor, and there was a gun in his hand—“ Derek broke off, a flood of memories assailing him no matter how hard he tried to hold them back.

                The gun had seemed so surreal to him. It had been like a toy, or a prop from a TV show, fake noise and fake bullets and fake blood. He had imagined that if the trigger were to be pulled, a banner that said _BANG!_ would be the only thing to explode from the barrel.

                “I told him not to do it,” Derek said, and he was almost whispering. He didn’t remember the exact words he’d used. He’d been scared, high on fear and adrenaline, trying anything to keep his friend from causing irreversible harm to himself and everyone around him. He remembered crying, screaming, begging Scott to _put the gun down, just put it down, please_. He remembered reminding Scott of the things he had to live for, of the life he had left to live, of his mother and—

                Shit. Melissa was out there somewhere, too, hanging on every word and judging him based on whatever happened next. A jury full of people who hadn’t been there, who didn’t know Derek and would never know Scott, got to decide whether or not he was a killer. Derek’s heart clenched with anticipation and a sick dread; he knew what he was waiting for. He wished he didn’t have to wait anymore.

                “Were any of your attempts to talk him down successful?”

                Derek took a shuddering breath and bit the inside of his cheek, hard, the pain distracting him from any thoughts of crying. “No. He looked like he was going to do it, and nothing I said was helping . . . he was so unstable. He was—screaming, and yelling and shaking the gun around—“

                “What did you do?”

                This was the moment. In thirty seconds or less, the jury’s minds would be made up, their opinions cemented forever. Derek, powerless to stop it, felt a single tear slide down his cheek. “I reached for the gun,” he said. “But I wasn’t fast enough.”

                The gunshot hadn’t been anything like in a TV show. It wasn’t a toy, or a prop, made from cheap plastic. It was heavy, metal, shining black, and the trigger had been sensitive. One pull from Scott’s finger and the sound had reverberated through Derek’s bones, deafening and terrifying and final. The bullet wasn’t made from rubber, and the blood that had covered the room behind Scott hadn’t been fake. There was no _BANG!_ banner, no amusing trick to signify that it was all pretend. There was just Scott, unmoving and still, and Derek, stumbling out of the room and retching into the toilet with his ears ringing until he couldn’t bear the noise. He’d gone back, shaken Scott, screamed at him to wake up, but he was never going to. His eyes had already glazed over, frozen forever in a look of infinite sadness that haunted Derek’s dreams.

                The lawyer gave the jury a moment to process this, then cleared his throat to ask another question. “Thank you. Derek, I understand that—“

                “This is _bullshit_.”

                Without looking up, Derek recognized the voice. He would know it anywhere, no matter where he was or how long it had been since he’d heard it. It had once been the only voice in the world he ever felt like hearing.

                Stiles.

                For the first time since he’d started his story, Derek was brave enough to lift his gaze and look. Stiles was standing up straight, his chair shoved behind him, his fists clenched and jaw tense. His lawyer was tugging on his sleeve, gesturing wildly for him to sit down, but Stiles stood his ground, as fierce and unmoving as Derek had always known him to be.

                Derek had just never expected that one day, Stiles would be this angry about something he had done.

                “Sit down,” the judge barked from behind his stand. “I will not ask you again.”

                Stiles ignored this, eyes blazing, and ripped his arm free of the lawyer’s grip. “This is bullshit, Your Honor,” he amended, but didn't back down. He pointed one long, accusing finger at Derek, and it felt more like a gun directed at his head. “This asshole is lying through his teeth! Can’t you people see that? He’s _lying_. Scott wouldn’t have called Derek if something was wrong, he would have called _me_ , I was his best friend—“

                “He wouldn’t have wanted to burden you—“ Derek protested.

                “Be quiet!” Stiles’ voice was shaking almost as much as his shoulders were, his thin frame vibrating with rage and misery. “You don’t know _anything_. You have no idea what Scott would have wanted, okay? You don’t care what he would have wanted! You _killed_ him, you killed my brother, and you have no right to be up on that stand pretending like you’re sorry—“

                He was cut off by a pair of massive arms wrapping around his torso. The bailiff, looking bored and uncomfortable in an all-black uniform, seemed unaffected by this turn of events, like it happened to him every day.

                Maybe it did.

                Stiles didn’t stop yelling as he was removed from the courtroom, tears streaking down his cheeks and his voice quavering, breaking, every breath he breathed another crack in Derek’s heart. “ _I will never forgive you!_ ” he said, over and over, until the words were ingrained forever into Derek’s brain. He imagined them as an inscription on the tombstone of Stiles and Derek’s relationship, the thing that had confirmed, once and for all, that any ties between them were severed forever. _I will never forgive you_.

                After Stiles’ outburst, there was a brief break, in which the jury and judge got up to stretch and Derek listened in as the two opposing lawyers argued with each other in hushed tones.

                “—have more control over your witness,” Derek’s lawyer was saying. “That outburst was completely inappropriate and unacceptable.”

                “I tried to stop him as best I could,” the other man snapped. “I didn’t want to make a scene—“

                “Well, you made a scene now. Stiles had his time on the witness stand. We all heard what he had to say. Anything he said during that tirade could have _ruined_ Derek’s case, Owen.”

                Owen shook his head vehemently. “Anything Stiles said after his testimony won’t appear on record—“

                “Do you think the jury gives a _damn_ about what’s on the record? People are emotional. When someone starts crying and screaming like he just did, it makes you feel sympathetic. The members of the jury who weren’t already convinced of Derek’s guilt most likely are by now. You have destroyed this case, Owen, and there’s nothing either one of us can do about it. Congratulations.” Derek’s lawyer stormed back to his own table, jaw clenched, looking as worried as Derek had ever seen him.

                This wasn’t a good sign.

                The trial was nearly over; all that was left was Derek’s cross-examination, and then it would be up to the jury to decide if they were going to imprison Derek for life or for only fifty years. The cross-examination would be brutal, he was sure of that. Owen was a smart lawyer, and he knew how to find people’s weaknesses and exploit them. There were so many holes in Derek’s story he was surprised they were even bothering to finish the trial, and Owen’s questioning would only serve to make it that much more obvious that Derek had committed a murder.

                He didn’t want to go to prison. Not for this. Not because of Scott. He couldn’t bear spending the rest of his life in a cell, rotting away, sad and lonely, for a crime he didn’t commit. He couldn’t bear his friends hating him, couldn’t bear Melissa and Stiles grieving Scott under the belief that Derek had taken the most important person in their life away from them, but he couldn’t see any way out of this situation.

                Derek let himself be led through cross-examination in a daze, barely hearing the questions and giving short, half-hearted answers. Everyone in the courtroom knew that this was just a formality, something that had to be done before the jury could spend three minutes debating the issue of his guilt. He was excused from the witness stand and the remaining portion of the trial passed by in record time, Derek’s lawyer delivering a closing statement that would have been phenomenal if there was any evidence to support his claims.

                The jury filed out one at a time to discuss his fate. As they passed by him, separated only by the thin paneling of the jury box, each of them took a turn staring at him like a prize-winning animal on display. Some of the gazes were curious, some even a little sympathetic, but for the most part, they were judgmental and cruel. Any hope that Derek had been clinging to slipped away, leaving his insides hollow and cold. He was resigned to his fate. He had to be. He couldn’t think of the way people would remember him—not as a gentle, kind friend, but as a vicious murderer. He couldn’t think of Stiles, couldn’t think of his hands or his smile or his freckles that drove Derek insane with love. He couldn’t think of Scott, of the way that he would never smile again, of the way that no one would ever grieve him properly—they were grieving him because he’d been murdered. No one would ever know about the inner turmoil he’d been dealing with, all the demons in his head that had driven him to take action that night. No one would ever know.

                No one but Derek.

                When he was a child, his mother had told him that his was a strong name. But as the jury took their seats again, thirteen minutes later, he felt anything but strong.

                He prayed to find that strength now, in the time when he needed it most, as the judge prepared to deliver the verdict.

                _Guilty_.

                The word rang in Derek’s ears, over and over again, a poison that rushed through his veins and ate at his heart. Guilty of a crime he didn’t commit. Guilty of killing someone who meant so much to him, and who meant even more to Stiles. Guilty of ruining the happiness of the one person he cared about most in the world.

                But they only gave him forty-five years in prison.

                As he was led away, back to a cell that was the introduction to his home for the majority of his life, he couldn’t help but think of Stiles. His face when he’d been screaming in the courtroom, the horrible, sickened, terrified look in his eyes . . . they were images that would haunt Derek for the rest of his life. They had been meant to spend forever together, Derek and Stiles, and a cruel twist of fate, a night that none of them would ever forget, would change them forever.

                The engagement ring Derek had bought was still nestled in the bottom of his sock drawer at home, in the apartment he might never see again, along with his joy and his life. He spent that night holding back tears and forcing himself not to make a sound, biting down on his tongue until the taste of blood in his mouth was the only thing he could think of. He choked on it, welcoming the pain when he coughed it back up and onto the floor of his tiny cell. It was just a tiny fragment of what he was feeling in his heart.

                But physical pain could only last for so long. Sooner or later, Derek was going to have to deal with the pain that was tearing away at his insides, moment by moment, memory by memory, lonely night by lonely, painful night. He was going to have to come to terms with the fact that Stiles hated him. He had to live with the thought that newspaper headlines were being printed right now, and they were not the ones he had ever been expecting to see. They would not read, _Derek Hale, hero, saves friend from suicide attempt_. They would read, instead, _Derek Hale, 27, murders 20-year-old Scott McCall._

                He would have to accept it, and live with it, and do anything he could do move on.

                But for now, until the sun rose, he would be content to live in shocked denial. Until the sun rose, he didn’t need to be strong.

                Until the sun rose, he could let himself cry.


End file.
